Welcome to Heaven | ✓

18: Ice Cream Cake

"Now that we're up to four members I'd like to do roll call and make sure everybody's here."

"Why do you always have to be so extra? This isn't necessary."

"Koyuki Tamura?" I went on regardless.

He emitted a loud breath. Considering lunchtime was underway and we were currently gathered at the second year staircase you'd expect a ton of hectic surveillance from any lingering students. Fortunately, as they had a special menu in the cafeteria today, most students were too busy shoving their way through the crowd to bother us.

"Here," Koyuki finally mumbled.

Grinning at his submission, I tossed an invisible mic in the direction of the lethargic teen doing his best not to doze off. "Chiaki Setoguchi?"

He opened his mouth to respond but was promptly distracted by an upcoming yawn. He brought his hand to his mouth to block it and after it waned, murmured, "Here."

I coughed, hoping Chiaki's lack of enthusiasm or interest wouldn't infringe on the energy I was putting out. I hopped over to our newest member who, instead of sitting on the staircase like the others, was huddled and tucked off as far as he could be. He was doing his complete best to block me out, but extending forth my imaginary microphone anyway, I bent over and popped my face beside his.

"Hayate Inoue?"

He buried his face into his knees, hiding all traces of his face from me. The silence that resumed was incredibly long and degrading and helped to rid all nonchalance previously in the air. I backed away and performed a little whoop.

"And with me, Kotori Teruhashi, we're all here! Woo-hoo!"

"Excuse me, I'm pretty sure one of us is clearly avoiding you," Koyuki noted.

"It's just your imagination," I said. "I know it goes without question that we're all glad to be here, right?"

I waited for them all to chime in a unified 'yes,' and even sent out pressuring gazes, but nothing but quiet loomed over us. Chiaki produced another audible yawn. I coughed and lowered my arms to my sides.

"Anyway, since my lovely goddess Miko Sakurauchi has sadly left us due to her class representative duties, I will take over as the mature figure you all desire by voicing out what our next step is. That said, I think the smartest thing to do would be to find ourselves a final member and officially form a club—"

"Or," Koyuki cut in, "we can get started on that birthday cake you agreed to make."

I cleared my throat, bringing my fist to my mouth. "As I was saying, I think this birthday cake comes as our top priority since we have a little over a week to get it done. Since, to form a club, we first need to secure a supervising teacher."

Koyuki leaned back on his palms, quirking an eyebrow.

"So," I went on as Chiaki's curious eyes drew to mine. The pressure was making me falter. "Well, I mean... To start on the birthday cake, we first need to figure out a plan for it, obviously. And to go with the plan, a proper theme—"

"Which we know is princesses because...?"

The corners of Koyuki's lips titled up high. He was so enjoying my discomfort. Dang it, I was so obsessed with Hayate lately all this information was pushed to the back of my mind.

"Because... Mr. Hanamura told us that his daughter loves princesses. So we technically need a princess birthday cake," I spitballed. "That being said, do any of you have princess movies we can go off of?"